noun [from geography and Shakespeare, 2005] 1. A small forest of words in the great metropolis of Brooklyn 2. A collection of ruminations, photographs, and lists on topics including (but not limited to) books, writing, movies, television, theatre, current events, publishing, food, and nonsense 3. The blog of Cheryl Klein, reader, writer, children's books editor, and busy lady about town

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Long silence, sorry. Life happening. Life is work (some really fascinating books coming up this summer); cooking (I have a great new kitchen and the Mark Bittman How to Cook Everything cookbooks and apps, and I'm loving using both); teaching (in the last two weeks of my Writer's Digest Plot Master Class); and running (the Brooklyn Half-Marathon is in three weeks, and I have to run ten miles later today). Also Mad Men, because I trust Matt Weiner to take us somewhere good.

Some tidbits I've written in the Master Class discussions, to make up for the lack of content here:

In terms of manuscript reading, when I'm hearing a pitch or something, I think of something "new" as:1)
an unfamiliar/unusual setting or character -- often meaning an
international or historical setting, as with WORDS IN THE DUST in the
lesson, or a delightful YA historical I published this last spring, THE
FIRE HORSE GIRL. Most parts of the United States do not get to count as
new. 2) an unusual combination of elements -- like ninja chick
lit, or a dystopian verse novel (not that I have actually seen one of
these, but it would certainly be new) (and kind of awesome if done
right, now that I'm thinking about it).3) An inversion of the
usual: An eight-year-old boy who hates dogs, for instance (rather than
wanting one as does most of his fictional ilk), or a teenage girl who
becomes a superheroine by staying at home (like Sansa Stark made
awesome).

I think the key things that make a book "quiet" are the stakes,
the pace, and the tone of the voice. When the stakes are low -- when what might happen
obviously isn't going to be life-changing in any direction; for
instance, will a certain character make it home in time for dinner --
then it's easy for a reader not to feel invested in the action, since
who cares? When the novel dwells more on tiny moments than big gestures
-- when the camera is set on an ultra-zoom on the action, let's say, so
every glance or twitch seems to have importance to the author -- that
can be lovely if we're invested in the characters and the stakes (a la
Jane Austen novels) . . . or it can be deadly slow and quiet, because
everything takes forever to narrate, and none of the action is very
dramatic, or out of the ordinary way.

And the tone
. . . well, there's a difference between a narrator who says "And then
it went SPLAT! all over the dirt!" and the one who says "It fell to the
ground," or the one who takes the time to craft a lovely simile about
the moon and include it in the story vs. the one who says "The blood
looked black in the moonlight." Which is not to say one is better than
the other, because one isn't, and I really like some quieter books --
Sara Zarr and Cath Crowley's novels come to mind. But I do think that if
you're writing a quieter novel in today's marketplace, you have to have
a really strong voice and really great characters to whom the reader
deeply connects to make up for that lack of action.

I think quiet stories achieve success when the world and characters
they portray are SO REAL and SO RICH and textured and believable that
readers can't help but become involved in them, because they tell the
truth about the world we live in -- even if the world in the book is not
our particular world. These stories do the small particulars so well
they become large and universal.

Dream sequences can serve a useful function in a novel if the dramatized
dream helps the protagonist realize something that is buried deep in
his/her unconscious, and that realization plays a role in the plot. BUT,
far too often, they are excuses for writers to have lots of beautiful
symbols and foreshadowing floating around for a bit that then takes
forever to pay off in the actual action, AND they stop that action dead
in its tracks for however many pages while the writer gets his or her
symbolic ya-yas out. AND some writers use them as the primary way for
the main character to receive information, which just feels cheap, as
the main character isn't earning that information in any way -- it's a
gift to the character from the writer, which really means a gift to the
writer from his/herself. I like symbolism (or more accurately,
image systems) a lot, and I think it can really enrich a book, but very
often dream sequences just feel self-indulgent to me. If you have a lot
of them, be sure every one is truly essential to the story, and keep
them short.

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Ten things I love: Books, trees, stars, roasted vegetables, "Singin' in the Rain," medium-tip blue rollerball pens, oatmeal, community, Scrabble, and my tall black boots.
All opinions expressed here are solely my own and should not be taken as those of the company for which I work.

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Text and most photos copyright (c) 2003, 2005-2015 by Cheryl B. Klein. All opinions expressed here are solely my own and should not be taken to reflect the opinions or official positions of the company for which I work. Thanks for reading!